Figure 14.—Winter. The lady wears a hood and mask, together with furs. She is walking in Cornhill, London. Engraving by Wencelas Hollar, 1643 (Parthey no. 609). (Courtesy of British Museum, London.)
During the Commonwealth period (1648-60) Hollar’s work depicting costumes faded out, but the diarist John Evelyn was writing a little book, Tyrannus, or the Mode, which was published in 1661.[30] In it he
mentions a French woman in London during the troubles, whose customers tormented her with inquiries about French fashions to such an extent that she used to devise “new Fancies out of her own Head, which were never worn in France.” Most likely she did not distribute fashion plates but displayed actual garments or miniature models, perhaps mounted as dolls (“babies”), as examples of new fashions.
In the Tyrannus, Evelyn not only touched on the history and psychology of fashion but also went as far as to recommend a reformed dress for men, including the Persian vest and sash which was to be reflected to
a certain extent in the fashions of the mid-1660s. Since he did not illustrate his theory, there has always been some dispute as to what the Persian dress actually was,[31] but in any case the fashion did not last. On the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II, returning to England from Holland, retained Dutch fashions for a while (fig. 15). But, by 1670, English men’s dress approximated the French in style, although not in sumptuosity.
